Who Are The AfD? It Could Be The First Radical Right Wing Party In Germany's Bundestag Since 1945

Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) politicians sing the German anthem at the party’s events. For a country whose national identity is still tied to its shameful past, this is intended to break a taboo on nationalism.

The AfD aims to reach out to those fed up with that taboo.

In just four years, it has gone from a eurosceptic party, focussing on rolling back the Eurozone, to a fiercely anti-Islam one whose leader said, as hundreds of thousands of refugees arrived, that police should shoot migrants dead if they tried to cross the border.

It has campaigned in the German elections with posters declaring: “Islam does not belong to Germany.”

Bolstered by new voters who resent how Angela Merkel welcomed refugees, produced the biggest shock of Sunday’s elections, after a relatively staid, pedestrian campaign but one that guaranteed to return Merkel as chancellor.

The AfD is set to pick up its first seats in the Bundestag to become the first far right party to reach the national parliament since the defeat of the Nazis.

It looks set to be the third largest party, after Merkel’s CDU and the left-wing SDP, and win up to 90 of the 598 seats with 13 percent of the vote.

Julian Gopffarth, a researcher at the London School of Economics’ European Institute, says being in the Bundestag is more than a symbolic milestone.

“There’s a real danger they might have a real impact,” he told HuffPost.

“If you look at [potential AfD Bundestag members], it’s quite scary. Some people have associated with the radical extreme right. They could have a bigger impact on German debate, German policy.”

Gopffarth notes the AfD has already influenced German debate and language used in politics.

The term “Gutmensch” - which roughly translates as “Do Gooder” - was previously only used by the fringe right to denigrate people who are deemed to be naive liberals. Now it is used “by all the political players,” Gopffarth said.

He added that the party “thrives” among people who resent not being allowed to be patriotic.

“The AfD will have an impact by being present in the debates, by having the stage of the national parliament but also by influencing the other parties. You can already see the sheer fear of the AfD becoming so strong, many parties move slightly to the right,” he added.

JOHN MACDOUGALL via Getty Images
'New Germans? Let's make them ourselves,' says an AfD poster, vandalised with the word 'Nazis'

Like Ukip, the AfD began as a more academic eurosceptic movement, aiming to challenge how much the EU was spending to bail out the beleagured Greek economy. Its founder Bernd Lucke, a politician and economist, aimed to build pressure to ditch the Euro.

But, again like Ukip, it moved to appeal to populist anger. In 2015, Lucke left the party, distancing himself from its growing focus on Islam. He said he was also alarmed at the number of people within the party who sympathised with Russia when it annexed Crimea by force in 2014.

Despite its shift of focus to religion, the party still pledges to abandon the Euro and return to the Deutschmark.

The new stars of the party include Alice Weidel, a 38-year-old former investment banker, who has dismissed gay marriage, despite herself being gay.

She has said those who come to Germany as refugees are not qualified enough to be allowed in. She said: “We don’t need illiterate people.”

Another star is Alex Gauland, 76, who recently said Germans should be “proud” of what their soldiers did in both world wars.